Hey guys, I'm desperately hoping someone has the bigger version of this texture, this was found in the Def and textures release, its only 64x64, but I know there is at least a 128 x 128 version of the texture out there somewhere,

So, I'm trying to make a little engine that can at least view the levels (I know, it's been done already, but it's a learning experience) and let you run around in them (and possibly edit them). So I've got to the point of loading the level structure from the PCX files with only a few small glitches, at okay speeds.

For a little look at my progress click on the picture below:(there's a comparison picture in the link if you can't tell what that is)

However, I've gotten a little stuck on how the engine is meant assign the block types from the DEFs to the pixel colours in the PCXs (loading the data and textures for each block is easy enough, it really is just assigning that I'm stuck with). I've been stuck for about 2 weeks now and it's getting a bit annoying so I thought that I'd ask for help.

PS Once I've gotten a viewer going, I'll probably put the source code up on Google Code or something, maybe get a small team up and running.PPS My first post. Hope this isn't considered bumping up an old thread, I figured making a new topic was alittle OTT for something this early on, especially for a new member.

So, I'm trying to make a little engine that can at least view the levels (I know, it's been done already, but it's a learning experience) and let you run around in them (and possibly edit them). So I've got to the point of loading the level structure from the PCX files with only a few small glitches, at okay speeds.

For a little look at my progress click on the picture below:(there's a comparison picture in the link if you can't tell what that is)

However, I've gotten a little stuck on how the engine is meant assign the block types from the DEFs to the pixel colors in the PCXs (loading the data and textures for each block is easy enough, it really is just assigning that I'm stuck with). I've been stuck for about 2 weeks now and it's getting a bit annoying so I thought that I'd ask for help.

PS Once I've gotten a viewer going, I'll probably put the source code up on Goggle Code or something, maybe get a small team up and running.PPS My first post. Hope this isn't considered bumping up an old thread, I figured making a new topic was a Little OTT for something this early on, especially for a new member.

Hey now this looks neat!You planing on making some kind of model exporter for that ? Now that would really Help us out on our project (AXSX PC level version)Right now were modeling everything by hand using screen grabs from SaniK's DEF Viewer.

Nice work, I'm glad to see that someone is still researching this stuff. It blows my mind continuousness that we had a HUGE release like this and so little has come of it.

Heh, thanks. I might end up putting a video on youtube or something, I've been trying to get the attention of people who might've researched this, but it seems like those people may have stopped paying attention to this leak a while back, which seems completely insane to me. I mean, if the community had a proper open source viewer, I don't see a working engine being that far behind.

QUOTE (Andrew75 @ Nov 13 2010, 03:51 AM)

Hey now this looks neat!You planing on making some kind of model exporter for that ? Now that would really Help us out on our project (AXSX PC level version)Right now were modeling everything by hand using screen grabs from SaniK's DEF Viewer.

I could probably make an exporter in the engines current state. The exported levels would probably look a bit silly at the moment though. Since, I don't yet have textures or block scaling being applied but I suppose I could see it being fairly useful for recreating the levels, being able to see the exact placement and everything.

The levels were built in a really weird way, they're really just made out of a ton of cubes. So, the exported levels would be... odd, it would just be a bunch of cubes in one mesh file, because I've not done a realtime conversion to a single mesh or anything, which would be much more efficient. But yeah, I bet it wouldn't be too difficult. If I got the DEF stuff working, I'd probably be able to spit out fairly usable (looking) levels.

Nice work, I'm glad to see that someone is still researching this stuff. It blows my mind continuousness that we had a HUGE release like this and so little has come of it.

Heh, thanks. I might end up putting a video on youtube or something, I've been trying to get the attention of people who might've researched this, but it seems like those people may have stopped paying attention to this leak a while back, which seems completely insane to me. I mean, if the community had a proper open source viewer, I don't see a working engine being that far behind.

QUOTE (Andrew75 @ Nov 13 2010, 03:51 AM)

Hey now this looks neat!You planing on making some kind of model exporter for that ? Now that would really Help us out on our project (AXSX PC level version)Right now were modeling everything by hand using screen grabs from SaniK's DEF Viewer.

I could probably make an exporter in the engines current state. The exported levels would probably look a bit silly at the moment though. Since, I don't yet have textures or block scaling being applied but I suppose I could see it being fairly useful for recreating the levels, being able to see the exact placement and everything.

The levels were built in a really weird way, they're really just made out of a ton of cubes. So, the exported levels would be... odd, it would just be a bunch of cubes in one mesh file, because I've not done a realtime conversion to a single mesh or anything, which would be much more efficient. But yeah, I bet it wouldn't be too difficult. If I got the DEF stuff working, I'd probably be able to spit out fairly usable (looking) levels.

Hey yeah! thatd be great! think we could probably wait for block scales.I was planing on manually merging all the cubes into 1 mesh, and deleting polygonal faces that arnt visible for the players, than welding into a solid mesh without leaks or holes.Curently our levels don't consist of cubes anyways. built by merging Cube faces.

Heh, surprisingly easy so far. Gotten the blocks exporting (the files are 25MB O_o), and Blender seems to be fine loading them.(It's the waterfall again btw)

I'm probably going to release the program (and source) once I've dealt with my last 3 problems:

1.) A few memory leaks (should be easy enough).2.) Crashes when trying to export block materials, which is why the picture is grey (not sure why that's happening).3.) I still don't have textures, exporting those would probably be really easy aswell. Unfortunately, I've not yet figured out how the block assignment works.

Heh, surprisingly easy so far. Gotten the blocks exporting (the files are 25MB O_o), and Blender seems to be fine loading them.(It's the waterfall again btw)

I'm probably going to release the program (and source) once I've dealt with my last 3 problems:

1.) A few memory leaks (should be easy enough).2.) Crashes when trying to export block materials, which is why the picture is grey (not sure why that's happening).3.) I still don't have textures, exporting those would probably be really easy aswell. Unfortunately, I've not yet figured out how the block assignment works.

And depending on how hard it seems:

4.) Get animated textures working.

Can't wait to dig into them there models ! Great progress!!Wondering what's the supported export format?

Really don't mind the 25 MB Files, Probably going to shave alot of MB off as the models get optimized by hand.After the release, and When I get a chance,( sometime after my Redsands level gets further along) I'll repost the optimized models back here for use in fan games.

At the moment, I'm saving as .x, just because DirectX has built in functions for doing that. Annoyingly, there isn't '.x' importer for 3DS Max, which is why I was using Blender (I believe Blender can save as most formats, so while an inconvenience, it's not too annoying), though there appears to be a program called 3DWin that can convert from '.x' to '.obj' but it looks a bit dodgy...

Edit: Still trying to figure out block assignments. Anyone know anything about ACT files? There's a file called MAINPLT.ACT which seems to hold 256 different palette colors, maybe it has something to do with the assignment, or maybe it's just something left over from somebody editing a file in that directory. I dunno, I wouldn't even know how to load an ACT file in C++...

My understanding of ACT files is that they're basically the number of palette entries as the first byte, followed by (that value * 3) bytes representing all the colors, one byte per R, G and B per color. At least, that's how I made an ACT generator in C# a few months ago - my memory's a bit fuzzy on whether that's specifically it, but it's something around that in format.

Ah, that actually doesn't sound too difficult. Unfortunately, I got a bit bored of trying to figure this thing out and was a bit bad... I tried reverse engineering the viewer that's already out there. I still have no idea how that thing works but it doesn't seem to try to load any ACT files.